Remember the summer of 2022 when politicians from Ed Miliband to Boris Johnson went around telling us that wind energy was ‘four times cheaper’ than electricity generated by gas. It wasn’t true then – even at the top of the spike in gas prices which followed the Ukraine invasion. But it looks like an absurd claim now. Miliband, in his latest auction for offshore wind farms, has just committed energy consumers to paying a wholesale price of £90.91 for their electricity, rising with inflation for the next 20 years.

Where does that fit with the Energy Secretary’s promise to save us £300 a year on our energy bills? No one knows the future course of energy prices, but the average wholesale price of electricity over the past 12 months was £79 per megawatt-hour.

In Miliband’s fevered imagination the latest tranche of wind farms are still somehow going to save us money because they will make us less dependent on gas. This seems to........

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